


Beached

by This-Is-Not-Overwatch-Fanfic (Hobbitfing)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: (they kill and eat a fish), Animal Death, Day At The Beach, Fishing, Fluff, Gen, Junkrat eating questionable things, M/M, Swimming, because that's my favourite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-09-01 19:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8635984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hobbitfing/pseuds/This-Is-Not-Overwatch-Fanfic
Summary: After leaving the Outback, Junkrat sees the ocean for the first time and has no idea what to do with it. Luckily, Roadhog knows how to enjoy the beach.





	

When Junkrat's exaggerated 'huh' failed to gain a response from Roadhog, he settled for leaning out and poking his bodyguard—this had to be timed carefully, when Roadhog wasn't in the middle of a turn or something, where a moment's startled distraction would turn them both into greasy smears on the side of this astoundingly well-paved highway.

Roadhog elbowed him back, grunting. He didn't need to be bothered while they were driving. Rat knew the rules. Only bother the driver if it's an emergency. The only problem was that Junkrat's idea of emergency wasn't the same as Roadhog's. Junkrat thought 'I found a beetle!' was important enough to bother Roadhog.

Frowning at his bodyguard, Junkrat yelled, "Stop!" at the top of his shrill voice.

With a sigh, Roadhog stopped his bike and stood to stretch. Might as well take a little break while they had the chance.   "What is it?" he asked, fully expecting something ridiculous.

"Were you going to just keep driving?" Junkrat asked, incredulously. "You trying to kill us or something?"

"What do you mean? There's a turn up there. I'm not gonna just drive into the sea," Roadhog laughed.

"See what?" Junkrat scratched a good itchy spot on his scalp, sighing with pleasure and leaning into his hand until he almost toppled over. "I don't think you can say 'the see', mate."

"The ocean. The sea. All that water out there," Roadhog pointed.

Junkrat shook his head. "Can't be water. Not that much. If it is…'s not safe." He subconsciously moved closer to Roadhog, putting his bodyguard's bulk between himself and the unknown. "Maybe we should just…turn around?"

"I know what I'm doing," Roadhog assured him. "You've never been to the ocean before?"

Mouth agape, Junkrat shook his head, peering around Roadhog suspiciously. He shuffled in place, almost like he had to pee, as his warring instincts—fear of the unknown; trust Roadhog—battled for supremacy. Finally, he shook his head again, then nodded. "You've been there before?"

"Yeah. Swam in it too." Roadhog grabbed Rat and nudged him back into the sidecar, getting back onto his bike.

Still far from convinced, Junkrat reluctantly allowed himself to be herded, huddling in the sidecar with a grumble and more than a few less than friendly glances at Roadhog's side as the other Junker started the motorcycle.

***

Roadhog found a way down from the plateau to a stony beach. There were no people around, and the water looked nice and cold. After a wary glance through the clear water for any animals, Roadhog stripped down to nothing but bare skin and waded in.

Junkrat's usual grin of pleasure—he always enjoyed the sight of Roadie naked—quickly turned to an expression of horror when Roadhog entered the water. "Mate, don't! Who knows what—!" The loose stones were hell to maneuver over with his peg leg, but Junkrat stumbled and cursed his way after his partner. Of course, he hadn't thought about what he'd actually do once he got there—he didn't want to enter the water himself, and while he might be able to leap far enough to tackle Roadhog, there was no way he could bring the big lummox down, especially not without one or both of them falling into the water.

Once he was up to his waist, Hog turned and gave Rat a grin. "It's nice, mate. Cold. Don't drink it though," he'd almost forgotten that crucial piece of advice. Junkrat was the sort who put everything in his mouth at least once just to see if he could. "Too salty. Want help in?"

" _No, you mad cunt_!" Junkrat shouted from the water's edge. "I want you to fucking help…out!" True, Roadhog didn't seem to be dissolving, or even writhing in pain—in fact, he seemed quite pleased with himself—but maybe that was just a side effect of the water.

Roadhog ignored his partner's fit of rage, laying back and letting himself float on the water peacefully. He undid his hair tie and his hair spread out around his head. It was so good to be able to get in the water. The lakes and rivers were all pretty polluted but the ocean was still fairly pure. It'd been a long time since he'd swum just because he wanted to. "Water's real nice," he commented, smiling as he listened to Rat working himself up on the shoreline.

Junkrat whimpered. The sight of Roadhog laying there, all spread out and naked with his hair loose just the way Junkrat liked and so rarely got within reach of his busy little fingers… Junkrat shook himself. "Shows what you know! 's not that much water in the whole world!"

"Most of the world is water, Rat. I'll give you something that floats if you want but you should come in." Hopefully there weren't any jellyfish or stonefish or sharks, or Rat really would never go near water again.

"'Most of the world's water,'" Junkrat repeated, seething. "Right. And I'm a Suit." Still…nothing bad had happened yet. Junkrat's innate curiosity won, and he bent down to examine the 'water'. It looked like water, true enough, but it smelled strange. Junkrat had smelled—and drunk—far worse, but Roadhog had specifically told him _not_ to drink this water. While he floated around in it. Sometimes Junkrat wondered if Roadhog was just making everything up as he went along, just like Junkrat.

There was something floating near the surface. Something green and drifty. By leaning out very carefully, Junkrat just managed to snag it, after a tossup between using his organic hand and potentially getting his remaining fingers melted—Roadhog was much bigger, after all, it'd take longer to work its way through him—or using his prosthetic and running the risk of ruining it in the water. His organic hand lost, and he jerked his fingers out of the cold water as quickly as possible, shaking them dry and glowering at the gently bobbing bulk of his useless bodyguard.

He turned his attention to the thing in his hand. It looked like a leaf, and leaves were generally worth eating when they could be found, which was almost never. Roadhog had told him not to _drink_ the water, but he hadn't told him not to eat things he found _in_ the water. Still, better safe than sorry. Junkrat turned around, facing the bike and sidecar they'd left at the top of the slope, curling over stealthily to hide his prize while he ate it.

Junkrat had been quiet for all of two minutes and that immediately turned on the alarm bells in Roadhog's head. He sat up and waded back to shore as quietly as he could, seeing Junkrat bent over something, stuffing a bit of god knows what in his face.   "What'd you find," he held out a hand, waiting for Rat to show him.

"Nothin'!" Junkrat said, voice muffled. He startled guiltily, swallowing as hard as he could. He coughed up a bit of green, trying to drop the evidence, but it was wet and stuck to his hand.

Roadhog saw the seaweed stuck to his boss' hand and laughed a little. "Ah, you can eat that if you want. It's just seaweed. People used to eat it with rice and fish."

Junkrat frowned, then grinned back. It was seldom that his furtive snacks met with Roadhog-approval. He'd had fish a handful of times, rice only once and it wasn't a fond memory. He gave Roadhog a thorough inspection, half-teasingly, half-serious. "No extra limbs. No rash or blisters or anything." He dug at his ear briefly, skipping sideways around Roadhog—distracting as the sight of dripping wet Roadhog was—to look at the sea. "It's really all water?" he asked, voice soft.

"Yeah. Wanna take off your prosthetics and come float with me?" Roadhog suggested.

A brief hesitation, then Junkrat nodded. "Might find more seaweed?" Just floating was…odd, but looking for food was always a good idea, even now that they were out of the Outback and there were shops everywhere that were packed and crammed with the stuff.

Roadhog helped Rat take off his prosthetics, letting the skinny junker lean on him and storing them safely in the sidecar. He picked Junkrat up in one arm and carried him out into the water, slowly. He let him get accustomed to the temperature, only going deeper a little bit at a time, letting Rat splash a bit and test out his buoyancy. He'd probably never had a chance to learn to swim.

Junkrat giggled when Roadhog scooped him up, a whoop of delight at being so easily lifted. He peppered Roadhog's bristly bare face with anxious kisses, tugging at his wet hair. As they entered the water, Junkrat was stiff and unyielding, clinging to Roadhog like, well, a drowned rat, but he slowly began to unclench and enjoy himself. The water was pleasantly cool compared to the heat of the day, and it made him feel light and free. Resting his flesh foot in the crook of Roadhog's arm, he slowly leaned back, laughing with glee when the water held him just like his bodyguard. He tried to sit up, falling underwater. He thrashed his way back to the surface, more by instinct than grace, sputtering and wide-eyed. "I saw a fish down there! It was this big!" Junkrat tried to hold up his arms for reference, but sank again. He managed to kick his way back to Roadhog, wrapping his legs around the other Junker. "This big!"

Roadhog grinned, holding Junkrat up so he could gesture about the fish. "Yeah, this is where the big fish live. Maybe we can catch one later and eat it." He stayed close within reach of Junkrat, but let him float a little and try to swim—or flail, anyway. Hog lay back with his tummy in the air, relaxing a little, with one eye open to watch Rat.

Junkrat's grin turned sharp and predatory, and he scaled Roadhog to sit on top of him and look around for fish. "Dunno how to catch 'em," he admitted, watching one swim lazily in Roadhog's shadow, "the ones I've caught were all in little ponds. Little fish, too, not like these."

"I'd use a net," Hog thought about it. "We probably have enough netting to catch something. Kind of just wanna lay here though. For awhile."

Junkrat sighed, but there was a tone to Roadhog's voice he'd never heard before, that made him think the other Junker meant it. Not anger, not frustration, just…calm. Peace, maybe. Junkrat bit his lip, hard, to stifle the exclamation that wanted to burst out. Maybe…maybe this was how Mako had been, Before, when people could just float around in the water all day without looking for fish to catch or green floaty bits that were apparently ok to eat.

He turned sideways, so he was lying across Roadhog's lap, with his feet dangling off on one side and his elbows propped up on the other side so he could look down into the astonishingly clear water. There were all kinds of things down there—fish of all different sizes and colours, and little spidery-looking things, and plants, and tiny shrimps, and things he couldn't even name or describe. Maybe this wasn't so bad, just floating here. Just for a little while, until he got bored or hungry or both, and then he was going to eat everything he could see swimming down there.

In fact…a quick glance showed him Hoggie's eyes were closed, so he quickly bent down and sucked up a slurp of water. It didn't taste good, by any stretch of the imagination, not compared to the absurdly high standard Roadhog had enforced when it came to their drinking water, but again, Junkrat had drunk far worse and hadn't suffered any lasting damage. He didn't understand his bodyguard's rules—you can sit in this water, and you can eat things that float in it, but you can't drink it.

"None of that," Roadhog said, without opening his eyes. The slurping sound gave him away pretty quickly. Thankfully Junkrat was the opposite of subtle. "Seawater makes you sick. I'm not taking care of you if you make yourself sick."

Junkrat scoffed. "Yeah you would. And it hasn't made you sick."

"It only makes you sick if you drink it. Curdles your insides," he warned. Threats like that tended to stick in Rat's mind, so hopefully he'd remember it. "It's ok to swallow a tiny bit, but don't drink more than a mouthful."   Roadhog kicked his feet a little, letting them drift a little further from shore. He kept an eye on the water and on Rat's face, since the other junker was watching the water below them. Back when he was Mako he'd seen sharks, had had friends who'd gotten stung by jellyfish. It had been dangerous back then with hospitals nearby, but now it was a different story. Hogdrogen would heal them, but it often made Junkrat sick and Roadhog didn't want to bother with that.   It was kind of nice to see all the sea life not only alive, but thriving. People on Australia's coasts hadn't been fishing as much, seeing as there was an apocalypse happening not too far away. At least something was doing well in this hellhole.

Junkrat yawned; the excitement of seeing all the fishes and swimming and just all this water had overtaken him, and the sun was slowly drying him off, and Roadhog was so warm and soft and comfortable to float on. His eyes kept drifting shut, and he'd wake with a start, only to have it happen again.

Roadhog enjoyed the sun for awhile until he started to drift off himself. That was a bit too risky and he started paddling back towards the shore. Once he was there he carefully lifted Rat up and carried him to a fairly flat spot on the beach. Grabbing all their netting and one of their tarps, Roadhog started setting up what he thought of as a fish trap. He pushed some driftwood deep into the sand and wove the tarp between them. He was tempted to use some of their scrap but didn't want any to wash away. He took the net out in a wide circle and then sat still in the water, watching the fish as they became used to him and swam right past.

Junkrat sat unusually still and watched, fascinated. "How's it work?" he whisper-yelled, cocking his head from side to side as he tried to figure out what Roadhog had built and why.

Roadhog just gave him a look, one that meant 'shut up', and kept at it. Once he was sure there were a couple big fish in the trap, he started to move slowly and carefully back towards the beach with the net. A couple of them escaped, wriggling out under the net or splashing their silvery bodies over it, but a few were caught firmly in the netting and Roadhog scooped them up and tossed them on shore as far from the water as he could throw them.

Groaning whenever one escaped, Junkrat squirmed with barely restrained excitement as he watched Roadhog emerge with the heavy net. He couldn't even tell how many fish were in there; certainly more than he'd ever seen in his life—well, seen before today, in any case. More than he'd ever eaten in his life, though it occurred to him that too was about to change. He licked his lips, sitting in the warm sand impatiently. He should've had Roadie grab his limbs when he'd grabbed the netting, but he'd been too busy trying to figure out what the other Junker was doing. Now that he thought about it, he rather suspected that Roadhog had forgotten on purpose so he couldn't interfere with his fishing. That was fine. He'd eat his weight in fish, that'd show him.

Roadhog got the rest of the net and tarp on shore. He'd caught more than he'd expected, none of the fish here seemed to know what a net was. They all met a quick end under the blunt side of Hog's hook, then he picked up one of their knives to try and gut them. He wished suddenly that he'd learned how to do this before the omnium crisis. "Why don't you get us a fire started? We'll fry 'em."

Delighted as Junkrat had been to watch Roadhog dispatching the fish, his grin grew even broader at the mention of _fire_. "That's my specialty," Junkrat assured him, heading to the bike for his secret stash of gasoline. He frowned, then called back, "You mean a _cooking_ fire, don't you?"

"Yes," he laughed, "Grab some of this wood laying around, it'll burn nice. No gas."

Junkrat sighed, giving the jerrycan a wistful shake, listening to the swish of fuel inside. "Fine." Grabbing his limbs instead, Junkrat scurried across the beach, gathering boring old pieces of wood and tossing them down in a heap. Actually setting it alight cheered him up again, and soon he was doing a happy dance in front of the roaring flame. The sun was beginning to set, sending his shadow far across the beach. "Almost done with those fish, mate, or did they swim away on ya?" he asked, rubbing his stomach, which was gurgling at the thought of the feast to come.

They were a little more butchered than he'd intended, but he'd gotten out most of the guts and bones and he figured that was the important thing. They had enough food that he'd also cut off the heads and tails, even though he was sure Junkrat would have eaten them. Roadhog didn't fancy eating something's face unless he really had to. Now all the fish were speared on their own sticks and Roadhog stuck the bottom of the sticks into the sand around the fire, leaning the fish over it so they could cook. He'd caught some big shrimp—maybe prawn?—in the net too and he stuck them on a stick to turn over the fire too, not sure how long to cook them.

There'd been a starfish in the net too, but he'd thrown it back. He wasn't sure they were safe to eat.

Junkrat was all but circling the fire and licking his chops like a hungry wolf, shooting Roadhog occasional—only every minute or so—entreating glances. "Issit ready yet?" he asked, for perhaps the thirtieth time. "Smells so good!" There was so much food, and it did smell good, maybe the best thing Junkrat had ever smelled in his life, and it was all for _him_. Well, whatever Roadie didn't eat, of course. Too bad it was taking forever and he'd probably die first.

"Give it a few minutes," he grinned. He felt good. Warm and tired from spending the day in the sun. Pleasantly tired, though, not the usual bone tiredness. And he felt clean from his little swim. The fish smelled great and so did the shrimp. Those looked about done and Roadhog pulled one off the stick, peeling off the shell and legs, popping it in his mouth and spitting out the tail. He hadn't had shrimp since he was a little kid. It was better than he remembered.

Watching Roadhog devour a shrimp, Junkrat whimpered at the injustice—his own bodyguard, sitting there stuffing himself like a king while he wasted away right in front of him!

Roadhog offered Rat the stick, showing him how to peel the shrimp and where the tail started before letting him go to town. Hopefully that'd distract him until the fish were ready.

Chomping and wincing as the hot shrimp juice burst in his mouth, Junkrat grinned at Roadhog. He ate the first shrimp so quickly he barely tasted it, burning his mouth, but he didn't care. He barely slowed down for the second, panting with his mouth open to cool it off.

"Slow down," Roadhog chuckled, but didn't do anything to stop him. Soon the smaller pieces of fish were crispy and the raw red had turned into a more palatable pink. Roadhog tore off a little hunk carefully and tasted it. It seemed alright, but he was no expert. He offered the rest of the piece to Rat.

Junkrat tore off a piece with his teeth, grinning even as he squinted his watering eyes, as the hot fish burnt the roof of his mouth again. A gulp, quickly followed by another bite until the fish was gone. "'s good!" he said, muffled, sounding only a little surprised. "'s really good, mate!" He glanced at the fish, grin widening. "And there's _so much_." He laughed. "Don't know if we can even eat it all, 'least not tonight." And wasn't that a lovely thought?

"We'll have breakfast tomorrow too," Roadhog nodded, grabbing one of the sticks and eating the fish right off it so he wouldn't burn his hands. It was hot, but delicious. He'd never been one of those vegetarians who ate fish, but now he was pretty sure if he got the chance, he would be. His grandparents had often tried to take him fishing with them when he was young, but he'd hated it and finally refused to go.

"Breakfast," Junkrat repeated dreamily, grinning at Roadhog. He grabbed another stick of fish, with barely a confirming glance in Roadhog's direction before he devoured it. He hated to admit it, especially so soon, but he was starting to get full. A funny feeling overcame him, and he wondered if that was how Roadhog had felt earlier, if this is how the man who would've been Jamison Fawkes, not Junkrat, might have been. Sitting on a beach eating fish with his mate, watching the moon rise and the stars come out. Nah. Probably ol' Jamie wouldn't set foot out of doors for fear of getting his pretty boots dirty.

Still, he felt…good. Shooting Roadhog a lazy smile, he murmured, soft but full of feeling, "Love ya, mate."

Roadhog reached over and squeezed Junkrat's shoulder gently. "You too."

"Yeah." Leaning back in the warm stones, Junkrat drew a few lines with the burnt end of one of the sticks. "I sometimes wondered if we'd get this far," he said, addressing the night sky rather than his companion. "I know," he held up a hand to forestall an argument from Roadhog, "you had complete faith in me the whole time, but…I doubted. Just sometimes. And here we are, sitting by the sea, eating fish…" He grinned, leaning over to lightly jostle Roadhog. "The world won't know what hit 'em by the time we're through."

Roadhog laughed, finishing off his last piece of fish, leaving them each a nice big portion for the morning. Hopefully it wouldn't make them sick to eat fish that'd been laying out all night. Young junkers never seemed to worry about that stuff but Roadhog remembered the days of health codes and inspectors and rules to follow if you didn't want to get sick.   Honestly, he had no idea what to expect from Rat when they'd first joined forces. But at this point… he could see them taking whatever they wanted wherever they wanted. They could do it together. Junkrat's brand of brilliance was unpredictable and that was part of what kept them two steps ahead. No one ever knew where they'd go next or what they'd do next. Half the time, neither did they.   Roadhog lay back on the stones and slowly stretched out. It was too rough to sleep on when they had bedding in the sidecar, but it was nice just to relax for a bit.


End file.
